


We walk the same path, but got on different shoes

by ariadnes_string



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:04:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four days since Steve had been found, two since he’d come home from the hospital, and he was still wandering around his own home like it was unknown terrain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We walk the same path, but got on different shoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kristen999](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristen999/gifts).



> Title from Lil Wayne's "Right Above It" (and subject to change!).

“Stay still,” said Danny. And then, as Steve continued his limping prowl around the living room, “Goddamn it.”

His tone was sharp enough to make Steve halt. He looked over at Danny as if he’d only just realized there was someone else in the room and was annoyed at the discovery. Danny cursed some more under his breath. Four days since Steve had been found, two since he’d come home from the hospital, and he was still wandering around his own home like it was unknown terrain. It made Danny want to tackle him, to sit on him ‘til he acknowledged he was surrounded by solid walls, not vines and trees.

But he quashed the impulse and tried again, consciously stripping his voice of irritation. “C’mon, babe. Sit down, willya? You know I’ve got to check those dressings.”

Steve glared a moment him a moment longer, then rolled his eyes and blew out a breath. He stalked—well, it would’ve been stalking if he hadn’t been moving so slowly—into the dining room and lowered himself into a straight-backed chair, arms around the wicker and back to Danny.

_Five days gone without a word_ , Danny thought. _A week, really. Fuck the nameless swathe of jungle that had swallowed Steve whole when the cartel thugs discarded him. So okay, maybe the swathe had a name, everywhere had a name, but Danny sure as fuck wasn’t going to learn it now. And okay, it was probably the cartel he should be blaming, and not the jungle. But fuck the jungle anyway. And bless every piece of military grade equipment that had brought Steve back in more or less one piece._.

“Jesus, Danny—get on with it already.” Five days back and Steve still sounded like sandpaper stretched thin.

Danny blinked himself back to the task at hand. “Got someplace to go, huh? Busy man? Ready to take on another drug ring by yourself?” He made himself approach the bruised expanse of Steve’s back, bare except for the white patch of gauze and tape between his shoulder blades, since Steve hadn’t bothered to get dressed past a pair of old gym shorts.

Steeling himself, Danny started loosening the tape around the dressings, but Steve hissed at even that light touch to his battered skin, and, tense enough to be startled by even that small indication of the pain, Danny ripped when he should have gently pulled.

“Motherfucker,” Steve said—not loud, but only because he was clenching his teeth.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“If I could reach back there—“

“I know, I know.” 

Danny tried hard to smooth antibiotic cream onto the tiny puncture wounds without really seeing them. Steve’s skin was hot to the touch; the swelling of the bruises combined with the low fever he’d been running since they’d stitched up a tear in his spleen. Not infection, the docs didn’t think, just exhaustion and reaction to surgery. But the fever was keeping him up at night, and the lack of sleep was making him even more restless and paranoid than he would have been otherwise. Danny had a sudden urge to punch the doctors who’d let Steve leave the hospital and trust himself to Danny’s unhappy care.

At least the wounds were healing okay. Indeed, they looked pinker and cleaner than nine puncture marks in the unmistakable pattern of a soccer cleat had any right to look after almost a week in the (fucking nameless germ-ridden) jungle.

Small as they were, though, they bothered Danny more than any of Steve’s other injuries—more than his crazy palette of bruises or his wrenched right knee or the parasites they were still trying to flush from his system—more than the internal injury that had required surgery. Maybe it was because Steve wouldn’t say a word about how he’d come to have a shoeprint in the middle of his back and so Danny was forced to imagine how it’d happen. Having to do that—having to imagine some thug pushing a bound, helpless, Steve facedown into the jungle muck and grinding the sole of his shoe between Steve’s shoulder blades while Steve struggled to keep his mouth and eyes out of the mud—imagining that, it was enough to—

“Ow,” Steve said, loud this time. He was off the chair, too. “What is with you? It’s not rocket science, changing a dressing without torturing someone.”

And they were back to staring at each other, as if across hostile territory. 

Danny scrubbed at his chin with his palm and fought himself to calmness. “Come back, those need to be covered up again.”

“Not by you, Edward Scissorhands.”

Steve looked wild—red-eyed and grey with fatigue. Danny felt a pang of irrational fear, as if he could lose Steve to the jungle even now. 

“Look,” he said, strained, and maybe a little wild himself. “I have an idea: let’s try shifting location, get a new perspective on things.”

Something desperate must’ve come through in his voice, because Steve scowled, turned his hands out in surrender, and allowed Danny to chivvy him towards the downstairs bathroom.

Once there, Danny dug around in the cabinets until he found what he thought he’d remembered seeing once before: an old, hand-held, round shaving mirror. “Here.” He pressed it into Steve’s hand, then slowly, deliberately , touching Steve as little as possible, positioned him so his back was to the larger mirror over the bathroom counter. Danny hitched himself up onto the counter next to Steve and set his supplies beside him. This way, he was facing Steve’s back, and Steve could see himself in the doubled reflection. “There. If you hold it up—yeah, like that—you can supervise, okay? Make sure I’m doing it right.”

Steve still glowered, but he did as Danny said, a tiny amount of tension going out of his shoulders. Danny sighed. He’d guessed right: at least part of what was making Steve squirrelly was not being able see what was going on.

Things went better after that. Danny applied the last bits of cream and cut the gauze into the right lengths. He kept his mind resolutely on the things in front of him—the medicinal scent of the salve, the cool metal the scissors, the _rip_ of the tape. Steve was as still as a statue in front of him. 

“There.” As Danny smoothed the last of the dressing into place, he allowed himself to look up for the first time. He found himself meeting Steve’s eyes in the handheld mirror—not focused on his own injured back, as he’d expected, but squarely on Danny’s face.

In the patch of eyes and cheekbones framed by the mirror, Steve didn’t look wild anymore, just tired and ill and maybe a little sad. The skin creased at the corners of his eyes; not in smile lines, Danny was sure, though he couldn’t see Steve’s mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I didn’t realize.” With his back turned like this, Danny could feel the words where he hands still hovered behind Steve’s lungs, as much as he heard them.

Danny shrugged and lowered his hands, suddenly self-conscious. He had no idea what Steve had realized; had no idea what his own face had revealed while he thought himself so studiously concentrating on wound care.

Steve turned around, put the mirror on the counter and met Danny’s gaze directly. They were close enough that Danny’s knee grazed Steve’s hip. Steve gave it a short, strong squeeze. “I’m back,” he said. “I’m back now.”

Danny looked into his eyes—tried to really look, to ferret out any traces of creeper vines and spiders, mud and humiliation. But what were eyes but a collection of nerves and neurons? What evidence could they really give? If Danny believed him, he’d have to do it on faith.

“I know,” he said. “Welcome home.”


End file.
